Office Market Demand Analysis and Estimation Techniques: A Literature Review, Synthesis and Commentary

Judgmental or applied office demand analyses have appeared in the literature for the past forty years. First, using office demand to population ratios, researchers moved to more comprehensive forecasting models that estimate segmented office demand from a growing set of variables. Although estimating equations now better reflect the underlying factors that create demand, improvements are needed in estimating office demand using employment; vacancy rates; demand for specialized office space; submarket overlap and competition; changes in supply resulting from obsolescence, conversion, and demolition; and improvement in primary data collection. Additional empirical work is also needed to verify which refinements to the model significantly improve the accuracy of the estimating equations.